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Dessert

Cherry Toast

Dessert of dry toast topped with stewed cherries and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cherry Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Make thin slices of very dry toast and butter them generously.

  2. Lay the toast on a dish.

Make the cherries and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 quart of stemmed cherries, ½ to 1 pound of sugar (to taste), and ⅓ cup of water.

  2. Cover and stew until the cherries are very tender.

  3. Pour the hot syrup and fruit over the toast and set aside.

  4. Serve very cold with cream.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Very dry toast
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that soaks up the hot syrup.
Butter
Adds richness and a fat coating that helps limit the toast going soggy.
Cherries
Supply the main fruit flavor and, as they break down, the bulk of the topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps form a syrup as the cherries stew.
Cream
Adds cool richness that balances the sweet, tart cherries.

The step that matters

Stew the cherries until very tender. Cherries must cook long enough to soften fully and release their juices into the syrup. Underdone fruit stays firm and gives a thin, unevenly sweetened topping.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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